Recent polls have indicated that a majority of non-indigenous Australians support a treaty between the indigenous Australian population and the federal government. This growing support for a treaty is an indication of a strengthening of opposition to the racist policies of John Howard's Coalition government.
The huge reconciliation marches around the country this year — the most notable being the "walk" across the Sydney Harbour Bridge by at least 250,000 people — have given a further impetus to the demand of many radical and progressive leaders for a treaty recognising Aboriginal people as the original inhabitants of the land.
The idea of a treaty, first proposed by Aboriginal rights activists, has been around for some time now. A senate standing committee in 1983 released a report which recommended a "compact" between the Aboriginal people and the commonwealth. The idea was resurrected in 1987 by the Hawke Labor government in a cynical attempt to dampen the size and radicalism of the Aboriginal protest planned for the bicentennial year of the British invasion of Australia.
That Bob Hawke felt compelled to announce that the federal government would negotiate a treaty with Aborigines reflected the strength of the Aboriginal rights movement at the time. But the fact that Labor was never forced to actually carry this proposal out shows that we need to build a stronger movement today.
The need for a treaty is manifest. Successive Australian governments, backed by business interests, particularly those in the pastoral and mining industries, have sought to "ethnically cleanse" the Australian continent of its original human inhabitants, and have refused to provide any meaningful compensation to the Aboriginal victims of government-sanctioned racist policies.
The Howard government has continued this racist tradition by refusing to overturn mandatory sentencing laws in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, restricting Aboriginal land rights with the 1998 Native Title Amendment Act, and with its refusal to apologise and compensate the members of the stolen generations.
The Howard government is intent on further abrogating the rights of indigenous people. It could be forced to retreat if it faced sustained mass mobilisations of the scale of the reconciliation "walks" demanding a treaty that secured to Aborigines full land rights, freedom from discrimination, preferential treatment for Aborigines in employment and education, and full compensation for past injustices.
A real treaty should not be another meaningless official document containing hypocritical rhetoric and vague intentions. It needs to be an anti-racist bill of rights.
Of course, a treaty in itself will not end the systematic injustices faced by indigenous Australians. New Zealand's Treaty of Waitangi, for instance, has not guaranteed the Maoris protection against systematic discrimination.
In the current political context, however, a treaty would be an important step forward for the Aboriginal rights movement. The call for a treaty is a concrete political objective that contrasts sharply with the vagueness of the official government controlled reconciliation process.
Free all the refugees
Immigration minister Philip Ruddock announced on November 25 that he will consider changing federal government policy to allow juvenile and adult female refugees and asylum seekers to live outside of detention centres while they await decisions on their immigration applications. The announcement was uncritically supported by both Labor and the Democrats.
Ruddock was responding to accusations by two Woomera Detention Centre staff that at least one child has been sexually assaulted in the detention centre and that management failed to act to protect the child.
Ruddock has been under increasing pressure over the last 12 months to humanise government policy on refugees and asylum seekers, in particular to abolish the policy of mandatory detention. This latest announcement is as much an attempt to divert criticism of government policy as it is a response to the immediate situation at Woomera.
The government must take seriously and investigate all claims of child abuse (and any other abuse) within the immigration detention centres, and act to prevent such abuses. However, separating women and children from their husbands, fathers and brothers would not guarantee the women and children's safety and would likely exacerbate the psychological trauma experienced by all refugees.
No refugee or asylum seeker — man or woman, adult or child — should be imprisoned in a detention centre. These people are not criminals but the victims of a unjust world system which each year forces millions of people to flee war, poverty and political persecution.
Now is the time to escalate the campaign to end all mandatory detention of refugees and asylum seekers, and to demand that the government provide adequate support — legal, financial and social — to enable all refugees and asylum seekers to exercise their human right to live freely and comfortably in this country for so long as they choose.